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By Dave Lindorff

It is going to be entertaining, to say the least, to watch John McCain and Barack Obama, both of whom endorsed the crooked, stacked rip-off bailout bill being scaremongered into law by the Bush Administration.

Now that it is clear that the American public overwhelmingly
recognizes this bill as a corrupt attempt to rob them and reward the
crooks and shysters on Wall Street, how will McCain and Obama weasel
out of their endorsement of the proposal?

They can certainly count their lucky stars that the vote was in the
House and not in the Senate, where they would have already had to take
a public stand up or down on the measure, but let's be clear--both men
have said they suppport the negotiated proposal that was put to the
House today, and which went down to a stinging defeat, 228-205, despite
the solid support of the House Democratic leadership.

Statement of Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service

In tonight's presidential debate, Senator John McCain repeated his claim that building 45 new nuclear power reactors by 2030 would somehow create 700,000 new jobs in the U.S.

This is simply wishful thinking on Senator McCain's part.

In fact, nuclear power is the most capital-intensive, most expensive way possible to create new jobs in the United States.

Let's take a look at a specific example: according to sworn testimony before the Maryland Public Service Commission, top officials of UniStar Nuclear, which seeks to build a new, 1600 Megawatt nuclear reactor on the Chesapeake Bay, testified that this proposed project would create a maximum of 4,000 short-lived construction jobs-most lasting one year or less--and 360 permanent jobs.

According to all the overnight polls below, voters chose Obama as the winner. But why?

My theory is that The Real McCain finally came across: angry, cocky, belligerent, and snide. Even though McCain is famous among Senators for his rage, he normally goes to extraordinary lengths to keep his anger out of public view by covering it with his forced and creepy smile. But last night he forgot his smile and let just enough of his anger and contempt loose to turn people off. He certainly lost Chris Matthews:

Nicole Belle writes,

There was one moment where Obama was direct and on the offense, without the petulance of McCain, as he confronted McCain’s rote recitation of being smart but unpopular by supporting the surge.  From the flash polls I’ve seen, this moment resonated deeply with those undecided voters, especially since McCain would not even look Obama in the eye.

By David Swanson

Prior to tonight's debate and each time during it that John McCain brags about his torture victimhood (or Jim Lehrer does it for him) or any of the participants touch on the topic of torture in any way without mentioning the facts below, please send Mr. Lehrer a note at onlineda@newshour.org along these lines.

Dear Jim Lehrer,

Are you aware of the following history?

In February 2008, John McCain voted against a bill that would supposedly have banned torture, and then applauded Bush for vetoing the bill.

In 2006 McCain voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act which supposedly left torture decisions up to the president.

Look what Jerome Armstrong found at noon - 9 hours before the debate! The Pentagon Post is on the case.

And Kagro X found a photo of Sarah Palin's office proving she lied when she told Israeli President Shimon Peres, "The only flag at my office is an Israeli flag."

Like the Energizer Bunny, McCain and Palin keep lying and lying and lying...

Barack Obama started today at 8:30 a.m. by offering McCain a joint statement on the financial crisis. But that wasn't good enough for McCain, who had to one-up Obama by proposing a suspension of the entire campaign and a postponement of Friday's debate, daring Obama to say no and thereby appear more interested in politics than the economy.

Obama rejected McCain's stunt with the appropriate smackdown:

It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess. I think that it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once.

Ouch!!! If Obama keeps this up, he's going to win in an LBJ-style landslide!